06 December 2017 4:11 PM

Is 'Libertarian' Mark Littlewood of the IEA really so ruthless? Would he secretly rather be civilised than consistent?

The Twitter conversation below has been going on for some time ( and is still continuing) below . I think Mr Littlewood's views on drugs are revolting and barbaric (not least because drug abusers harm many others apart from themselves). I wondered (and wonder) how an educated person in a civilised society can seriously put such proposals forward. So I sought to check whether he was really applying a principle. This is where we were at 4.15 p.m.on Wednesday 6th October.

An exchange on drug legalisation between Peter Hitchens and Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)

ML: I'd argue a case can be made that it's better for legal profits to made from narcotics than to keep the industry in the hands of organised crime. Reasonable people can disagree on this.

PH: Why are cynical businessmen, with access to high street, advertising, supermarkets, preferable to organised crime which can be kept away from these things?

ML: In very general terms, I prefer people to use brands, marketing & advertising to sell products rather than a network of armed criminals.

PH: And you would apply that to, say, People-Smuggling, Prostitution and Slavery? Or does any moral factor enter into your calculations?

ML: I would basically apply the same logic to voluntary, consenting adult activity. So, broadly "yes" on prostitution, broadly "no" on slavery.

PH: Asked you last night 'Leaving aside questionable description of prostitution as either voluntary or consenting(do you really think so?) what about People-Smuggling? Note you dodged that one.'

ML: I'd radically change immigration policy (which may it moot). But in a 2nd best world, I'd essentially treat it as an attempt at fraud and thus criminal (by way of analogy, I wouldn't legalise the private copying/production of passports either).

PH: Inconsistent and evasive. How does that fit with your attitude towards mind-destroying drugs and prostitution? Surely from your PoV it's only an 'attempt at fraud' because of these tedious 'prohibition' laws which 'criminalise' 'young' people for entering the country.

ML: Not really. In essence, I'd allow self-harm. Smuggling, say, a jihadist into the country is other-regarding. Snorting cocaine or smoking hash essentially isn't. (although I'd retain e.g. driving under the influence of drugs as an offence)

ML: Basically I apply the Mill test. The action merely affecting you isn’t enough to ban it. Eg I support the right to suicide - it impacts others but doesn’t IMHO breach their rights.

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“Freedom isn’t just the bare ability to do something; it is the ability to act under the influence of properly functioning cognitive faculties. If you value freedom, then you should oppose the legalization of recreational drugs

“Many libertarians argue that we should legalize recreational drugs in the name of freedom and personal autonomy. Drug prohibition, they argue, infringes on personal freedom by denying individuals the liberty to do what they want with their own bodies.

“This is mistaken. In fact, it is drug legalization that infringes on freedom. Drug prohibition, not legalization, is the real pro-liberty position”--Timothy Hsiao, “The Libertarian Case for Drug Prohibition.” (A Google search for the author and title will retrieve this essay from the Public Discourse website.)

Ky - among the sorts of crime listed as becoming more frequent is ‘threats/force’. This sounds pretty serious to me, and certainly doesn’t speak to any obvious decline in violence. Of course, it’s difficult to draw any firm conclusions because, as the report states, prostitutes are less likely to contact the authorities as a result of the law. The fact that it’s produced a ‘buyers’ market’, however, would lead us to expect that prostitutes are more vulnerable to violence (as well as making less money). That it’s the client who is criminalised isn’t of any great comfort in this regard, because crimes of violence against prostitutes were already illegal and it’s hard to see how this law affords them greater protection. In short, I think the onus is on those advocating this law to show that it wouldn’t put prostituted in a worse position.

It sounds very official and it is not totally wrong to describe so - probably.

However if one looks into the report carefully, it was published in 2012, written by Ulla Bjørndahl at Pro Sentret on commission by the municipality of Oslo and with support by the Ministry of Justice and Public Safety - ”Pro Sentret were granted part of the funds”.

A part of the research presented in the report was done in 2007, before the criminalization of the purchase of sex, through the interviews with 95 people who had contacts with this supporting centre (I understand as a pro-prostitution organisation) where the author was/is related.

I was a bit alarmed that the report describes in two different parts:

”The numbers can only be interpreted one way: women who sell sex in Oslo is a group where many have been exposed to *extreme* violence in the last 3 years. A frequency of *extreme* violence this high is seldom seen among such a small group in Oslo.”

”The numbers in table 10 can only be interpreted one way: women who sell sex in Oslo is a group where many have been exposed to *serious* violence in the last three years. A frequency of violence this high
among a group this small, is very rare in Norway.” (My emphasises)

(No page indication. Two pages before Table 10)

It is not shown here any comparison before and after the new law.

But Table 12 demonstrate what kinds of violence are increased/ decreased:

”Decreased: threatened/forced into sex that was not agreed to, restrained,
robbed/attempted robbery, struck with open hand, struck with fist, trapped, raped, thrown from car, pinched.”

It is not easy to say how we interpret the results but some kinds of serious violence have decreased according to their interviews. This may be understood as I quoted before:

” It is the customer that engages in illegal action and thus has the most to fear if reported to the police by a prostitute.The police have no indications on more violence following the ban on purchasing sexual services.” (Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security 2014)

Another bombing tragedy in the Middle East just recently, this on in north Sinai of Egypt, that killed over 300 people. A horrible crime and act of terror. For whatever reason, who knows?

It's possible that crazy incidents like this are from over a thousand years of cannabis infiltration into certain elements of Middle Eastern society. It could be they are deranged from the cannabinoids, or perhaps even carrying genetic 'baggage' from ancestral abuse.

I lost the name of the scholar, but there was a published quote I once read from some Lebanese professor who said basically: "The West thinks these crazed terror attacks are because of verses from the Koran, when in reality they are from deranged hashish smokers".

Elaine – I don’t doubt that most women who enter prostitution are desperate, or that it’s generally an unpleasant business to be involved with. That doesn’t alter the fact that there is a *world* of difference morally speaking between women who are coerced into prostitution through the threat of violence – sex slaves – and women who enter it because they have few other options (you might consider them to be ‘exploited’, but then many would say the same of, say, minimum wage retail workers).

You will have, then, to justify your view that prostitution is an evil which must be stamped out, even if trying to stamp it out means (as I believe it does) that prostitutes are more at risk of violence and disease than they would be under a system of decriminalisation.

Ky – the sex purchase ban employed by the Nordic model may well have reduced demand for prostitutes (though since a lot of activity involving prostitutes has – as the report you cite concedes – been displaced indoors, as well as online and into neighbouring countries, this is a rather speculative conclusion).

However, if it’s done so at the cost of making life more miserable and dangerous for the remaining prostitutes, I’m not sure it qualifies as a success. The same report you allude to states: ‘“women … report to have a weaker bargaining position and more safety concerns now than before the law was introduced.’

A second report released by the Norwegian government, ‘Purchasing Sexual Services in Sweden and the Netherlands’, contradicts the other report’s claims about the effect on violence. It acknowledges that the impact is uncertain because violence against prostitutes wasn’t recorded systematically either before or after the law took effect, but states that tougher competition because of fewer clients has forced them to take on more abusive clients (p. 13).

A Municipality of Oslo report, ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, appears to confirm this: ‘This seems to indicate that the frequency of violent incidents among those that experience violence in the indoor market has increased after 1. January 2009’ (p. 13). It also notes that prostitutes are less likely to seek help from authorities when assaulted following the law, which may partly explain the failure to find an increase in violence: ‘The numbers would therefore seem to indicate that fewer of those that have been exposed to violence receive support from various agencies after the sex purchase ban was enacted than they did before 2009’ (p. 28).

This report also confirms the idea that the sex purchase ban has made prostitution a buyers’ market, meaning prostitutes are forced to deal with more unpleasant customers; by definition, the remaining customers are more criminally inclined, and prostitutes have less ability to refuse their services than before.

Ky, nice to see someone concerned and taking the effort to research these modern oddities!

Noteworthy also is that another wildfire caused by marijuana activities was the 2009 La Brea wildfire in southern California that burned nearly 90,000 acres. The cause of the Soberanes wildfire last year which consumed about 130,000 acres was by an illegal campfire. Whether or not it was from illegal 'trespass grows' of marijuana is unclear now, but there also, like so many other forest fires in California, many pot farms were discovered.

Another scary aspect now is the butane hash oil fires that can also occur in urban areas. Apparently for some, smoked cannabis is not enough, so they resort to hashish production. And occasionally the gas of one of those operations explodes with fury. The damage at an apartment building can look just like it was hit by a Palestinian rocket!

What an irony that so many of those who love marijuana also seem to be self-proclaimed champions of the environment! Meanwhile Governor Brown of California is currently going about the world preaching how global warming is increasing the hazard for wildfires, and that California's carbon reduction efforts should be emulated!

You know, there are two points worth making just in case they are not obvious to all;

1) The vast bulk of the cannabis legalization and liberalization initiative is by the left. Liberal elitists are behind this, while the bills to legalize recreational cannabis in the US are mostly by Democrats.

2) Many, many of the crazy, murderous sociopaths in recent decades were major druggies. The PH blog has been tabulating many, but some further research inspired by PH reveals also that many, like Bundy, Manson, the Symbionese Liberation Army, etc, etc. were also major abusers of recreational drugs.

So you have to wonder if some of these individuals or groups are 'seeing demons' so-to-speak from those drugs they abuse, ie chemical alterations of the mind, that might prompt some to commit acts of evil and wickedness on society.

I doubt that, since you described yourself as a “life-long libertarian”.

“If I had added all the caveats you raise it would have looked like something written by a lawyer.”

Do you think so? I thought the points I raised were fairly obvious ones. Your definition of libertarianism, if implemented, would be totally impractical. It doesn’t require a lawyer to see this. And no, I’m not a lawyer.

Although, it does seem to me that you are now saying the definition of libertarianism you provided is a truncated version, and there’s maybe a bit more to it. Would that be correct?

“......the one you raise as to whether or not annoying Xmas carols should be banned is another question: who shall decide?”

Well, I was really questioning the wisdom of using the word “annoying” in this argument. If we ban things people find annoying, we’d have to ban just about everything because somebody somewhere will find something or other annoying.

“That is best answered by the wise old Chinese proverb to the effect that the only people who are totally safe are those who are six feet under.”

Indeed. Which really just serves to demonstrate my overall point that your definition of libertarianism is unworkable, because there’s a myriad of activities which have at least the potential to cause harm to another. You could take this to all sorts of extremes. “Harm” covers quite a lot of ground. As does “potential”.

It’s all very well asking who should decide such matters, but it might make for a more interesting discussion if you could spell out the sorts of things you personally would like to see prohibited, and why.

For example, you said this previously -

“Which takes precedence - the smoker's right to enjoy his habit, or the non-smoker's right to breathe clean air? I happen to believe the latter, but I should understand completely if somebody wished to espouse the former.”

Would I be correct in assuming you favour a smoking ban, then? If so, I’m not sure what’s libertarian about this. I’m sure plenty of non-libertarians would agree with you. I think it sounds quite authoritarian.

You also said -

“.....there is no libertarian objection to "sex and drugs" in a separate, designated area....”

Presumably, you are in favour of legalising the consumption *every* drug, so long as it’s done in private, or a place designating for drug-taking. But without “harm” being defined, it’s easy to see how this “activity” could harm another or others. Therefore, you could just as easily oppose this sort of drug-taking on libertarian grounds, given your definition of libertarianism.

Unless, of course, I am correct, and there’s a bit more to your definition of libertarianism.

”A portable generator being used in a marijuana farm was the culprit in the devastating Loma Fire last year that destroyed 12 homes and burned thousands of acres…

… the property was under investigation for the fire, but that the grow was likely the work of renters. Those occupants have not been seen since the fire broke out."

"The Loma Fire was the county’s most destructive wildfire linked to marijuana cultivation since the 2002 Croy Fire, which burned over 3,100 acres, destroyed 31 homes and which officials blamed on unpermitted solar panels powering an illegal marijuana grow.”

*
”Woodhaven Police say a marijuana grow operation is to blame for a condo fire …

Fire fighters found a marijuana grow operation in the garage. …
The condo owner … began growing his own marijuana with a personal use license just a few months ago.

They say Michigan law allows personal license holders to grow 12 plants total. Detectives found 12 mature plants and nine smaller, unpotted plants. … they believe the venting system and fan were likely the cause of the fire.

"It looks like the fan maybe short circuited or over heated.” (12 Jun. 2017. WXYZ Detroit.)

*
”Fires led police to two marijuana grows - each of more than 100 plants - in El Paso County in two days.

… police went to …the owners, who couldn't document permission to grow plants in the home. Officers obtained a search warrant and found 153 marijuana plants, 289 clones and pot-growing equipment.”

”In Fountain, police were called to help with an electrical fire about 7 a.m. Friday … The fire appeared to have been caused by "altered electrical wiring" connected to the illegal grow of more than 100 plants, police said.” ( 30 June 30, 2017, Gazette)

”During the fire investigation, authorities determined there was a marijuana grow operation at a nearby building. Southern California Edison were able to trace the cause of the fire to a power surge coming from the building. Investigators said it was partly the smell that tipped them off.

Authorities found up to 3,400 plants at the location, along with unsafe wiring and various chemicals…” (16 Oct 2017. abc7)

To beatpoet | 10 December 2017 at 12:18 AM. I suspect our views are closer than you imagine. I deliberately kept my earlier post brief, so that it would be readable. If I had added all the caveats you raise it would have looked like something written by a lawyer.

Implicit in the questions "Which takes precedence - the smoker's right to enjoy his habit, or the non-smoker's right to breathe clean air?" and the one you raise as to whether or not annoying Xmas carols should be banned is another question: who shall decide?

I could have gone into detail about how this is a question to be debated by parliament. (In Britain we have, effectively, no constitution - any statute parliament passes is the law - but in America there would be a further question as to whether that statute conflicted with their Constitution.)

Or should such things be debated by parliament at all? Perhaps it would be better to have a Swiss-style system whereby the populace can force a binding referendum?

Then any dispute has to be decided by a court; should that court comprise a judge sitting on his own or a judge and jury?

And much more in the same vein. Any normal reader would fall asleep before reaching the end of that lot.

You raise the point that even driving careful at 30mph you create some hazard for others. That is best answered by the wise old Chinese proverb to the effect that the only people who are totally safe are those who are six feet under.

Again, somebody has to decide - this time how much risk may be eliminated without making everyday life impossible. If all diesel exhaust were to be banned we should all starve - hardly an improvement.

Elaine Quraishi | 09 December 2017 at 10:42 PM asks do "you really believe that a psychologically healthy person would want to do that kind of work".

I can assure you that they do. If you doubt that go and talk to the girls of Amsterdam's Zeedijk - see my post of 09 December 2017 at 04:24 PM.

As a woman you are at a disadvantage - because the girls are less likely to approach you - else you could simply take a stroll through Soho and see how many ladies with impeccable English (not necessarily London) accents approach you to ask if you are "looking for business".

Trust me, they are not suggesting setting up a co-operative to retail matches.

Nobody is forcing them. They are doing what they do for a variety of reasons, some simply to make money from an activity they enjoy, others because it seems preferable to arduous hours in a shop or office, and some out of pure laziness.

Ky | 10 December 2017 at 10:24 AM quotes a report from the Norwegian Ministry of Justice ”The decline of the total prostitution volume [in Norway] is .... estimated to be around 25 % compared to 2008" and infers that this is due to the passing of a law.

That is a classic example of confusing causation and co-incidence.

As we all know, in 2008 there were massive problems throughout the world's economy. The incidence of prostitution always rises during times of economic stress, and sinks back again when the economy returns to normal.

The reduction is exactly what one would expect based on trends dating back centuries, millenia even, before the law was passed, so I strongly question that the law had much to do with it.

”Since the indoors market is less reduced than the outdoors market, we conclude that the share of indoors prostitution of the total prostitution market has *increased*.”(it says *decreased* in their report summery in English…)

”The decline of the total prostitution volume is - with a high degree of uncertainty - estimated to be around 25 % compared to 2008.” (before the law was introduced, I think.)

Sorry about this confusion but now we know that even a report from the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security can contain mistakes… And I was too tired to check (though I thought it was strange) the text in both languages last night.

“....quite right to highlight the practical difficulties of libertarianism.”

Well, I was highlighting the practical difficulties of your definition of libertarianism. However, if your definition of libertarianism is an accurate précis of what is, then yes I am, by extension, highlighting the practical difficulties of libertarianism.

“If my family is going to be distraught when I die then they will be equally distraught whenever it happens.”

Indeed, yes. But that’s hardly the point. Your take on libertarianism is that people should be able to do as they please except when it causes actual or potential harm to another or others.

As I said, you might want to define what you mean by harm. Amongst other things.....

Let’s consider driving a car on a public road, within the speed limit. And let’s say I’m about to embark on a short journey on a road where 30 m.p.h. is the speed limit, that I’m a competent, experienced driver and that I always obey the speed limit. At the outset, there’s still potential for me to cause harm to another or others. I’m human. I make mistakes. So, the potential exists that I might harm another or others as a result of my actions. Should I be forbidden not to embark on my journey due to the potential for harm to another or others?

“There is always a clash between what people want to do and other people don't want them to do. And there are many grey areas.”

Yes, of course. The problem with your definition of libertarianism is that it doesn’t recognise these grey areas. If it causes actual or potential harm to another or others, it shouldn’t be allowed.

“We can legitimately oppose the smoker's right to enjoy his habit on the grounds that he is annoying others, but not on the grounds that he is harming his own health.”

Well, this is just a can of worms.

We can certainly oppose things that “annoy others”......I don’t see any problem with holding an opinion that something should be banned because it causes annoyance. However, it’s a bit of a leap, to say the least, from this to actually prohibiting it by law.

As I stated on another thread, the ghastly Christmas pop songs which are played repeatedly at this time of year certainly annoy me.

Should they be banned? They annoy me, and doubtless many others.

Looking at it the other way, if you take the view that something shouldn’t be prohibited on the grounds that a person “is harming his own health”, then you’d have to argue for the legalisation of all drugs, for example. Perhaps you do this, I don’t know.

But then, legalising all drugs has the potential to cause harm to another or others, doesn’t it.

”The Norwegian legislation was evaluated in 2014 by a government-appointed academic research institute. Fully in line with the results in the 2010 evaluation of the Swedish prohibition (see below), this offence was found to “have contributed to the reduction in the demand for ‘sex’ with prostituted individuals.”

The researchers also concluded that:

• The enforcement of the law, in combination with the laws against trafficking and pimping, makes Norway a less attractive country for prostitution based trafficking than what would have been the case if the law had not been adopted.

• The economic conditions for prostitution in Norway are reduced following the implementation of the law. These effects are in line with the intentions of the law and are thus not considered as unintended side effects.

There is not any evidence of more violence against ‘prostitutes’ after the ban on buying sex entered into force.

I think the above mentioned document (Rasmussen’s) is what the feminist blog originally *extracted* from and Mr Wooderson has quoted later:

Justis- og beredskapsdepartementet (Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security 2014). This 194 page long report is mostly written in Norwegian but there is a summery in English p.11- 14. It says curiously not as Mr W re-quoted, but rather opposite.

”Even so, this analysis finds no clear evidence of more violence against women in the street market after the introduction of the law. It is the customer that engages in illegal action and thus has the most to fear if reported to the police by a prostitute.The police have no indications on more violence following the ban on purchasing sexual services.”

” Our analysis of the indoors market is that it has stabilized at a somewhat lower level than before the introduction of the law. Our best estimate – with a high degree of uncertainty – is a market reduction of 10-20 percent compared to the situation before the law.

However, since the indoors market is less reduced than the outdoors market following the law, we conclude that the share of indoors prostitution of the total prostitution market has decreased.”

Lately I have been hearing about numerous illegal cannabis cultivation farms in America's pristine national forests and that some of the forest fires are started by those irresponsible growers. And then I read how wildfires in California may be offsetting all the carbon reduction gains via conservation efforts.

The implications are that a single wildfire has the potential to negate most if not all the carbon footprint reduction efforts in a year made by California. Or perhaps to some degree, the entire efforts made by all of Great Britain in a year. Shouldn't this be of concern to the entire world? Afterall, Global Warming and man's contribution, assuming its validity, could eventually spell environmental disaster. Yet the desire for marijuana has resulted in myriads of "illegal grows" on federal lands of the United States, some of which are known to cause major forest fires.

You eloquently pointed out that illegal operations actually INCREASED in the State of Colorado since marijuana legalization, so it stands to reason that trend will unfortunately continue in California after legalization takes place in 2018.

Now please reference the Scientific American article "California's 50,000 Pot Farms Are Sucking Rivers Dry" dated July 23, 2015 that points out that these grow operations are causing tremendous amounts of environmental damage and killing wildlife.

So imagine fifty thousand cannabis cultivation farms in California and how that number will very likely increase! And note all the water needed to cultivate a single marijuana plant, water that is precious in drought-ridden California! And imagine all the new forest fires that will occur because of marijuana cultivation, all the new greenhouse gases, and the environmental damage locally and to the planet as a whole because of the demands for marijuana by the ubiquitous pot lobby.

So with the legalization, and worse, LIBERALIZATION of marijuana, not only do we get more mental illness, and more crime, and more traffic fatalities, and less fresh water, and more fertile farm lands in California devoted to marijuana instead food production, but we also get huge negative impacts on the environmental well-being of our planet.

We must be careful to distinguish here between ‘trafficking’ in the sense of ‘illegal people smuggling’ and in the sense of ‘sex slavery’.
Joshua Wooderson

We don't really need to distinguish anything. Whether the prostitute is being "trafficked" or turned into a sex slave or supposedly enters the profession "willingly" she (or he) is still being exploited. Unless you really believe that a psychologically healthy person would want to do that kind of work. If that's what you believe I suggest you watch something other than "Pretty Woman"
One website you may look at is "Voices of Prostitution Survivors"

I have read that the Swedish model was working better than other methods. I could be wrong but even if it isn't, that doesn't justify not trying to combat it. Evil is evil and we have a moral obligation to stand up to it, whether we are always successful or not.
But attempting to sanitize something that cannot be sanitized is the absolute worst thing you could do.

Mr. Hitchens writes: ‘Such sweet naivety. Given the feebleness of our police, what prostitute would give evidence of this kind against such people?’

The danger of arguments like this is that however much evidence is presented against the idea of widespread sex trafficking – or however much the evidence is shown to be lacking – it will be written off as a result of police incompetence etc. It is notoriously difficult to prove a negative, but if hundreds of raids and vast amounts of police resources fail to turn up a single sex trafficker, despite their alleged ubiquity, then that seems about as good evidence against the idea as it’s possible to get.

Further evidence against the ‘prostitutes as sex slaves’ narrative is that we can trace its origins to a highly speculative (by the authors’ admission) report by two academics which (again by the authors’ admission) conflated all definitions of sex trafficking, and then made wild extrapolations from limited data, to reach its conclusions. This report was then latched onto, and its figures inflated further, by a motley crew of politicians, religious do-gooders, tabloid journalists and radical feminists. All this is documented by the journalist Nick Davies in a 2009 article, ‘How misinformation flooded the sex trafficking story’.

Davies also points out that the sex slave narrative is contradicted by the testimonies of prostitutes themselves: ‘After detailed interviews with a hundred migrant sex workers in the UK, Dr Mai [of London Metropolitan University] found: “For the majority, working in the sex industry was a way to avoid the exploitative working conditions they had met in their previous non-sexual jobs.” ‘

In my reply to Elaine Quraishi of 09 December 2017 at 11:29 AM I stated "Many [prostitutes] have not been trafficked and do not have pimps". PH asked "How does he know this? Where is the information to be found?"

Take a stroll through the Zeedijk (Amsterdam's red-light district). Or the area behind the Promenade des Anglais in Nice or similar. Be sure to do so at a slack time when the girls are bored rather than busy, and chat to them. [Lesson One in journalism: If you want to know what is really going on, ask the people at the coal face, not the bosses and "experts".]

I speak fluent Dutch, so I may have a small advantage, but most of them speak fluent English so any advantage is necessarily small. You will discover that they are all EU citizens so they have no illegal status to be revealed. Many are just ordinary housewives making a bit of pin money.

Certainly it is true - much more so than it used to be, since the genius Angela Merkel decided to open Europe's doors to all and sundry - that some are, as PH says, "in debt to the trafficker". The Romans had a phrase to cover that: caveat emptor.

We must be careful to distinguish here between ‘trafficking’ in the sense of ‘illegal people smuggling’ and in the sense of ‘sex slavery’.

There is evidence that legalised prostitution increases the former; more women wish to work in countries where they can ply their trade legally (and often for better money). There’s very little evidence that the latter (which is a monstrous crime) exists on any scale, even in illegal markets. Operation Pentameter, a UK operation that involved hundreds of raids of sex workers over six months, failed to find one person who had coerced somebody into prostitution.***PH remarks: Such sweet naivety. Given the feebleness of our police, what prostitute would give evidence of this kind against such people? ***

On the Swedish or ‘Nordic’ model, I recommend a post on the feminist blog ‘genderate’ entitled ‘Why the Nordic model sucks’.

A salient extract: ‘A Norwegian government report on the Swedish sex purchase law found that it had created a ‘buyers’ market’ and that violence against sex workers had increased (Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Public Security 2014). Furthermore, Levy and Jakobsson (2014) argue that there is no reliable evidence to support the claim that the Swedish sex purchase law (sexköpslagen) has created a reduction in prostitution. There is some evidence of a reduction in street prostitution but no reliable evidence to confirm that this has not been displaced into indoor markets – in fact there is evidence that this has indeed occurred (see Chu and Glass 2013-14).’

Elaine Quraishi | 08 December 2017 at 05:49 PM writes "Prostitutes are often victims of human trafficking. Even when they are not, pimps regularly pressure them to do "work" they would rather not do".

Indeed, but not always. Many have not been trafficked and do not have pimps.***PH asks: How does he know this? Where is the information to be found? I should have thought the two groups were pretty closely correlated. Isn't the relationship based on the fact that the trafficked persons are in debt to the trafficker, and compelled into prostitution by debt and by the fact that the traffickers can at nay time reveal their illegal status if they fail to pay or co-operate with their demands?*** The fact is that women vary more than men in the amount of enjoyment they get out of sex, and some simply reason that the opportunity to make large sums of money doing something they enjoy anyway is not to be turned down.

Yet again imprecise definition of words causes problems. Right here in this thread we have the word "trafficking" being given diametrically opposite meanings. On the one hand it is used to mean women forced into prostitution; on the other hand it is used to mean illegal immigrants being smuggled into the country.

In the former, the trafficked are being forced to do something they don't want to do; in the latter the trafficked are paying substantial money for the privilege, so it is reasonable to infer that they want to travel.

***PH writes: up to a point. Many of them have been sold false promises of their earning power and potential living standards in the target country, and contract debts with the smugglers (in whose power they are thereafter) on the basis of these mis-sold phoney joys***

Even the word prostitute can have widely differing meanings. At the one extreme there is the drug-addled girl in her early teens being abused by her pimp; at the other extreme there is Mme de Maintenon (favourite mistress of Louis XIV).

But, silly me, Mme de Maintenon was not a prostitute - she was a "courtesan".

beatpoet | 09 December 2017 at 12:55 AM is quite right to highlight the practical difficulties of libertarianism. The point is that it provides a framework for testing whether proposed legislation is acceptable or not.

There is always a clash between what people want to do and other people don't want them to do. And there are many grey areas.

The classic example is smoking (tobacco). Which takes precedence - the smoker's right to enjoy his habit, or the non-smoker's right to breathe clean air? I happen to believe the latter, but I should understand completely if somebody wished to espouse the former.

We can legitimately oppose the smoker's right to enjoy his habit on the grounds that he is annoying others, but not on the grounds that he is harming his own health.

As to my family being utterly distraught if I killed myself while driving at 100 mph, I will point out that all of us, me included, are going to die sooner or later. If my family is going to be distraught when I die then they will be equally distraught whenever it happens.

Bill - from the Coventry Telegraph: 'According to research, counterfeit cigarettes sold in packets looking almost identical to genuine brands, contain "much higher quantities of known carcinogens" than normal ones.

They have five times as much cadmium, nearly six times as much lead and high levels of arsenic. They also contain 160 per cent more tar, 80 per cent more nicotine and 133 per cent more carbon monoxide.'

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